Issues & Workarounds For Windows 7 Explorer Navigation Pane

I’ve been using Windows 7 for months, it is great & I quite like it, especially the automated plug & play features and its simplified interface. However, it is annoying when I rely very much on its Window Explorer to perform my day to day tasks. It seems that this powerful tool has been overwhelmed with many unnecessary features (I believe Windows Vista is similar).

Here are the two issues I want to highlight to you:

1. The Navigation Pane focus goes away when directory is expended.
2. The Navigation Pane is overwhelmed with unwanted items such as Libraries, Favorite & Homegroup.

The Navigation Pane Focus Goes Away When Directory Is Expended

If you are not clear what this issue is about, perhaps you should try this. In the Navigation Pane of the Windows Explorer, try to expend as much folders as you can. You will come to a point where the focus will goes away to the top of the pane, especially when there are a lot of expended folders in the Navigation Pane.

Maybe, this is only a small issue; nevertheless it greatly reduces the efficiency while we are in the middle of exploring our files & folders. For illustrations, check out the following video.

The Navigation Pane Is Overwhelmed With Unwanted Items

I was surprised when I saw the unnecessary items (Favorite, Libraries & Homegroup) appear in the Navigation Pane & can’t be removed directly. I believe more than 99% of the Windows users don’t need the Favorite & Libraries folder. I personally prefer these folders not to stay inside the pane; it simply takes up the space.

The Workarounds

I’m not sure whether the “focus” behavior is functioning as intended or by mistake. In actual fact, it is related to the extra items in the Navigation Pane as mentioned above.

That means to say hiding (not deleting) the Favorite, Libraries & Homegroup in the Navigation Pane, with the “Show all folders” uncheck in the Folders Option (as illustrated below), will makes the Navigation Pane focus stay at it is & it will behaves more like the classic Windows XP, simple as that.

I’m not going to show you how to hide those items here, there are excellence posts around for you to go through. It involves editing the windows registry. If you are serious about this issues, check out Customize the Navigation Pane in Windows 7 Explorer and How to Remove and Hide “Libraries” Group from Navigation Pane of Windows 7 Explorer. Good luck!